


Enter: Wasteland Rascal

by sugarthot



Series: Medusa Radio [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: casual nudity, courier is 14 and maccready is 15, kids being kids, mentioned body deformity, post new vegas, pre fallout 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 06:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19785163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarthot/pseuds/sugarthot
Summary: the young courier encounters the soon-to-be-exiled mayor of little lamplight and they find themselves becoming friends, albeit slowly.





	Enter: Wasteland Rascal

Six wanders into the cave, Pip-Boy LED useless as soon as they reach the first lamp hanging on the wall, five feet from the entrance. The man they'd met not a mile from their current location had spoken of a hidden settlement made up entirely of kids, and Six hadn't liked the look in his eye when he spoke of them nor his tone when he had commented that a kid like themself shouldn't be wandering alone in the Mojave. They'd pulled out their tire iron when the man had started to follow them to the settlement, which put an end to whatever he'd been planning, unarmed as he was.

Of course, they're aware of how young they are. Teenage wanderers don't survive long in the wasteland, that's a fact, and they'd not been lucky when they were hired as a courier. They'd needed caps, and their employer figured that them getting killed just meant they wouldn't require payment. Getting shot in the head was also not lucky, and it's a miracle that they're still not-dead enough to be searching for an adolescent-run settlement. Really, you might think they're extremely fortunate to have survived thus far or extremely unfortunate to still be stuck in this goddamned hick desert.

They walk for a very long time before they reach a sign that reads, “Entrey Forbiden! Dont com in”, scrawled messily on a slab of wood hung below a cave lamp. It looks like it was written by a six-year-old, and it might as well have been. They stare at it for twenty seconds, bemused, before continuing their search for the settlement. They walk on for about twenty minutes more before encountering a similarly incoherent sign reading, “mungo’s beGone !”, written almost twice as haphazardly and half as intelligibly. They stare at the two words(?) critically, wondering what in the Mojave “mungo” means. It sounds like a spongy dessert, but they've been wrong before. Maybe they condemn desserts. After all, few people know of toothpaste, least of all isolated settlements of children. Many treat sweet things like death due to the damage it causes to their already decaying teeth. Or maybe it's a sort of sigil, like one of those drawings in the “biple” that supposedly ward away bearded men. 

“Hey! Stop right there before I cap your knees, mungo!”

Six’s head darts up quickly, finding a ratty teenager standing behind a fence on what appears to be a poorly made gate. The spud has a rifle aimed right at them, a bright red LED aimed promisingly on their left shin.

Instead of asking the spud to lower his gun, Six says, “what is a mungo?”

The spud hesitates, probably because the first thing people do when they have a gun aimed at them isn’t question the vocabulary of their attacker, but answers regardless, “Uh… it means adult. Y’know. Old guy.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m not an adult! I’m fourteen.” 

The spud lowers his gun for a fraction of a second, before snapping it back up to point at Six’s face, “Uh-uh. You’re too tall to be fourteen. Take off that helmet, lemme see your face.”

“Okay!” Six says before switching off the red lights in their helmet and pulling it off, “I’m Six, by the way.”

“What? You just said you’re fourteen.”

“No, my name is Six.”

“Oh. I’m Maccready. I’m the mayor.”

Maccready looks them up and down for a good half-minute, before remarking, “you look too tall. Like a baby on stilts.”

Six scratches their head, “my boots are platforms. They add three or four inches.”

“Isn’t it hard to run in them?”

“I don’t run.”

Maccready stares, before chuffing and motioning behind him to catch someone’s attention. He makes a stirring motion with his finger and looks back to Six, which initiates an awkward staring contest for the next twenty seconds before the gate (loudly) begins to open.

“Come in,” Maccready says before disappearing from Six’s view, “I’ll see you inside. You better be alone.”

When Six steps inside Little Lamplight, they aren’t immediately surprised. They’d already gathered that the community was made up of children and teenagers, so when they see only children and teenagers, the only realization they come to is _this place smells like brahmin shit._ They voice their thoughts to Maccready.

Maccready looks back to glare at them without stopping, “It's hard to get kids to wash themselves. It’s even harder to get clean water.”

Six nods, looking around in amazement. The community is actually really well put together, especially when one remembers it was built by children. They almost voice their thoughts to Maccready, but he's stopped walking and is speaking to a little girl with a rusty knife.

“You need to stop trying to cut Eddie’s hair. I know you think it looks bad, but you’re giving him bruises and he doesn’t like it.”

“It looks like shit. If he just held still, I wouldn’t have to hold him down,” she notices Six hovering behind Maccready, “who the hell is that? Your face is fucked up.”

Maccready sputters loudly and slaps the girl’s head, “hey! You can’t just say stuff like that to people you don’t know! He-- Sh-- they have a gun!”

Six stares at the little girl curiously and smiles, “Hi! I’m Six!”

She doesn’t seem impressed, “Wow. The radiation really fucked you up, huh?” she walks around them and continues wherever she’d been going, probably somewhere to mess with Eddie.

“I’m not- hey! I’m not done with you!” Maccready stares at the back of her head as she ignores him in favor of literally anything else. He sighs in dismay, “anyway, uh, let’s go to to my office, we can talk there.”

The mayor’s office is identical to almost every other room in the town that Six has seen, excluding a large rotting wood desk with the word “mayer” carved into it. Six sits down in one of the seats opposing Maccready’s own and stares at him. Maccready can’t remember seeing them put their helmet back on. 

“So, why are you here?”

Six clears their throat, “why not?”

“We don’t have… visitors. If that’s what you are.”

“Are children allowed to stay here longer than adults?”

Maccready furrows his brow and leans forward in his chair, “we don’t get many children. Not on their own. We get plenty of adults with kids, looking for shelter or something.”

“And do you take them in?”

“We take the kids, if the adults can’t handle them. If they’re injured. We can’t take in the adults.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we don’t.”

Six says nothing.

“They’re… untrustworthy. Only kids here. Those are the rules.”

“Is that how it’s always been? Is that why?”

“...Yes. What do you want?”

Six lifts themself up to cross their legs under themself in the chair. They tilt their head, analyzing Maccready, gauging his emotion through his posture. He’s tense, thin, obviously stressed. The mayor of the town looks like a little skeleton, just as scared as everyone else, but more willing to do something about it. And he’s suspicious. Fearful. He doesn’t want bad things to happen to his town. Six smiles, but Maccready can’t see it.

“I’m looking for a place to stay for a while. I’m good defense, I can go outside and hunt, make trades, if that’s what you need. If that’s what you want. I’m useful.”

Maccready sighs. Six isn’t sure how old he is, maybe fifteen or sixteen, but his eyes reflect years a teenager couldn’t possibly possess. Six feels bad for him but understands.

“We already have so many kids. We don’t have enough food and ammunition to go around. We can’t afford another number in the system.”

Six nods and tries again, “I understand. Maybe I could help with that,” they pull their overstuffed backpack onto the desk with a huff, causing the old desk to groan in protest, “I’ve got a lot of ammo I don’t use, an’ my pal Rex has been lugging around bighorner meat for the past two days. We don’t eat it. We can give it all to you, if you need it. We don’t.”

Maccready’s eyes bulge, but he stops himself before he can smile, “that’s very… convenient.” 

“It really isn’t. We just get attacked a lot. It’s very inhibiting. Even if you don’t want us, you can have it all, but we’ll need a lot of caps for compensation.”

“So… what do you want exactly? Just a place to stay?”

“Yep! Rex and I get pretty lonely out there. My pal Arcade’s been gone for a couple months, so we’re- well, I’m pretty bored out there with no one to talk to.”

“Is Rex an adult?”

“Nah, he’s my dog! Well, he’s not really my dog, but he’s my main scoop right now. My number one. My wingman. He’s harmless. He just don’t like rats.”

“Who does?” Maccready mutters under his breath as he looks through Six’s bag. As promised, there are countless boxes of diverse ammunition, none sparse except shotgun shells. There are even a couple grenades and mines, and Maccready blanches before he remembers that none of them will be active, obviously.

“This-- you’ll need a bed. This could work out.”

“Alright! While you set that up, I’ll get Rex. Thank you, Mayor Maccready!”

Before Six gets up, however, Maccready stops them, “Where is Rex right now?”

“He’s outside the cave. I left him there in case things got… hairy.”

Maccready nods, and Six leaves his office to get their dog.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a long time ago. i'll upload more of the series later. feedback is appreciated


End file.
